State takeovers of struggling school systems represent some of the most contentious policy decisions in education. The transfer of decision-making power from a locally elected school board to the state is often undertaken with the goal of dramatically improving student academic achievement in districts that have been persistently low performing over many years. The results of such reforms have important equity implications, as the districts targeted for takeover often serve high concentrations of low-income students of color. In this article, Beth Schueler describes a recent paper she co-authored with Joshua Bleiberg that sheds light on how this significant shift in education governance affects children and their learning. In the paper, they find no evidence that state takeover benefits student academic achievement and some evidence that it can be disruptive to student reading performance in the early years of reform.